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In the novel, Goldstein is a character rumoured to be a former top member of the Party and an early associate of its leader, "Big Brother", but having broken away early in the movement and started "The Brotherhood". Ostensibly "The Brotherhood" is organized into cells, with each member required to read The Book, supposedly written by Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Goldstein is always the subject of the "Two Minutes Hate", a daily program beginning at 11:00 a.m. at which an image of Goldstein is shown on the telescreen and subjected to extreme contempt.

The novel raises but leaves unanswered the questions of whether Goldstein or "The Brotherhood" really exist. When asked by protagonist Winston, Inner Party member O'Brien replies as follows:

Winston: Does the Brotherhood exist?

O'Brien: That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.

O'Brien claims that Goldstein's book was written by the Party leadership, including himself, but this statement leaves the questions of Goldstein and the Brotherhood's existence unanswered, and may be an untruth by O'Brien to deceive Winston.

The reader may surmise that a political opposition to Big Brother — namely, Goldstein — was psychologically necessary in order to distract, unite and focus the anger of the people of Oceania. Ostensibly, Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.

Not long after the novel's appearance,[1] a number of contemporary commentators noticed that the biography, appearance, writing style, and political thought of Emmanuel Goldstein resembled that of Leon Trotsky. Born Lev Bronshtein, Trotsky was a close associate of Russian revolutionary Lenin and later the chief rival of Stalin, the latter of whom branded Trotsky a traitor and expelled him from the Soviet Union in 1927. In exile, Trotsky wrote The Revolution Betrayed, denouncing Stalin and the Soviet Union. During the Great Purges of the 1930s, Stalin's propaganda invariably depicted Trotsky as the instigator of all supposed plots and acts of sabotage. In 1940, he was murdered in Mexico by Ramón Mercader, a Stalinist agent.

In 1954, Isaac Deutscher wrote that Goldstein's book in Nineteen Eighty-Four was intended as a "paraphrase" of The Revolution Betrayed.[2] In 1956, Irving Howe described Goldstein's book as "clearly a replica" of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed, writing that the parts that seemed to be imitating Trotsky were "among the best passages" of the novel.[3] Critic Adrian Wanner, writing in a collection of essays edited by Harold Bloom, described Goldstein's book as a "parody" of The Revolution Betrayed, noting that Orwell was deeply ambivalent about Trotsky.[4] Orwell wrote of Trotskyism that

The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i. e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference.[5]

President Richard Nixon's decision to go to China, long considered a Cold War foe, inspired comparisons with Emmanuel Goldstein's analysis of the shifting alliances of the three superpowers in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[6] The widespread vilification of Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal inspired commentary comparing his treatment in the media with the Two Minutes Hate sessions focused on Goldstein.[7][8]

"Goldstein is the Osama Bin Laden figure in Orwell’s novel, an extremely elusive person who is never seen, never captured, but believed by the leadership of Oceania to be still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters. Since Goldstein is never captured, the battle against his crimes, treacheries, sabotages must never end."[9]

Legal scholar Cass Sunstein, in his 2009 book Worst-Case Scenarios, coined the term "Goldstein Effect", described as "the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat."[11] According to Sunstein, since the U.S.-led War on Terror so heavily associated terrorism with bin Laden, the outrage intensified in similar ways as displayed in Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, he also pointed out how Saddam Hussein, to a great degree, and George W. Bush (to a much lesser degree) had been subject to the same Goldstein Effect.[11]